Russia’s Urals region has been rocked by a meteorite explosion in the
stratosphere. The impact wave damaged several buildings, and blew out
thousands of windows amid frigid winter weather. Hundreds are seeking
medical attention for minor injuries.

Army
units found three meteorite debris impact sites, two of which are in an
area near Chebarkul Lake, west of Chelyabinsk. The third site was found
some 80 kilometers further to the northwest, near the town of Zlatoust.
One of the fragments that struck near Chebarkul left a crater six
meters in diameter.

Servicemembers from the tank brigade that
found the crater have confirmed that background radiation levels at the
site are normal.

Russian space agency Roskosmos has confirmed the object that crashed in the Chelyabinsk region is a meteorite:

“According to preliminary estimates, this space object is of
non-technogenic origin and qualifies as a meteorite. It was moving at a
low trajectory with a speed of about 30 km/s.”

According to
estimates by the Russian Academy of Sciences, the space object weighed
about 10 tons before entering Earth’s atmosphere.

As of 15:00
Moscow time, 725 people have sought medical attention in Chelyabinsk
alone because of the disaster, 112 of whom have been hospitalized, of
them two in heavy condition. Among the injured there are 159 children,
Emergency ministry reported.

­A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from space objects such as asteroids or comets, ranging in size from tiny to gigantic.

When
a meteorite falls on Earth, passing through the atmosphere causes it to
heat up and emit a trail of light, forming a fireball known as a
meteor, or shooting or falling star.

A bright flash was seen
in the Chelyabinsk, Tyumen and Sverdlovsk regions, Russia’s Republic of
Bashkiria and in northern Kazakhstan.

The Russian army has joined
the rescue operation. Army units are searching for meteorite debris in
several places in Chelyabinsk region and in the neighboring Tyumen
region.

Radiation, chemical and biological protection units have
been put on high alert. Since the explosion occurred several kilometers
above the Earth, a large ground area must be thoroughly checked for
radiation and other threats.

At least one piece of the fallen
object caused damage on the ground in Chelyabinsk. According to
preliminary reports, it crashed into a wall near a zinc factory,
disrupting the city's Internet and mobile service.

The Emergency
Ministry reported that 20,000 rescue workers are operating in the
region. Three aircraft were deployed to survey the area and locate other
possible impact locations.

The Ministry reported that 297
buildings were damaged, and another 450 buildings were left without gas
because facilities in the city had also been damaged, an Emergency
Ministry spokesperson said, according to Russia 24 news channel.

The
trail of a falling object is seen above a residential apartment block
in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk, on February 15, 2013.(AFP Photo / Oleg
Kargopolov)

Witnesses said the explosion was so loud
that it seemed like an earthquake and thunder had struck at the same
time, and that there were huge trails of smoke across the sky. Others
reported seeing burning objects fall to earth.

The Urals regional
center of the Emergency Ministry claimed it sent out a mass SMS
warning residents about a possible meteorite shower. However,
eyewitnesses said they either never received it, or got the message
after the explosion had already occurred.

Classes for all
Chelyabinsk schools have been canceled, mostly due to broken windows.
Institute students have been dismissed until next Monday. Authorities
also ordered all kindergartens with broken windows to return children
to their families.

According
to unconfirmed reports, the meteorite was intercepted by an air
defense unit at the Urzhumka settlement near Chelyabinsk. A missile
salvo blew the meteorite to pieces at an altitude of 20 kilometers,
local newspaper Znak reports quoting a source in the military.

Regnum
news agency quoted a military source who claimed that the vapor
condensation trail of the meteorite speaks to the fact that the
meteorite was intercepted by air defenses.

Police in the
Chelyabinsk region are reportedly on high alert, and have begun
‘Operation Fortress’ in order to protect vital infrastructure.

Office
buildings in downtown Chelyabinsk are being evacuated. Injuries were
reported at one of the city’s secondary schools, supposedly from smashed
windows.

An emergency message published on the website of
the Chelyabinsk regional authority urged residents to pick up their
children from school and remain at home if possible.

Those in
Chelyabinsk who had their windows smashed are scrambling to cover the
openings with anything available – the temperature in the city is
currently -6°C.

Chelyabinsk regional governor Mikhail Yurevich is
urgently returning to the region. Yurevich said that preserving the
city’s central heating system is authorities’ primary goal.

“Do not panic, this is an ordinary situation we can manage in a couple of days,” the governor said in and address to city residents.

Local zinc factory was damaged the severest, some of its walls collapsing (Photo from Twitter.com user @TimurKhorev)

Screenshot from YouTube user Gregor Grimm

The
regional Emergency Ministry said the phenomenon was a meteorite shower,
but locals have speculated that it was a military fighter jet crash or a
missile explosion.

“According to preliminary data, the flashes seen over the Urals were caused by [a] meteorite shower," the Emergency Ministry told Itar-Tass news agency.

The ministry also said that no local power stations or civil aircraft were damaged by the meteorite shower, and that “all flights proceed according to schedule.”

Deputy
Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who also oversees the Russian defense
industry, wrote on Twitter that he would speak with Prime Minister
Dmitry Medvedev about the incident in the Urals.

“On Monday I
will bring to Medvedev a straight picture of what has happened in the
Urals and prospective proposals of how the country can find out about
the dangers approaching Earth and deal with them,” Rogozin wrote.

Residents
of the town of Emanzhilinsk, some 50 kilometers from Chelyabinsk, said
they saw a flying object that suddenly burst into flames, broke apart
and fell to earth, and that a black cloud had been seen hanging above
the town. Witnesses in Chelyabinsk said the city’s air smells like
gunpowder.

Screenshot from YouTube user Gregor Grimm

Residents
across the Urals region were informed about the incident through a
cellphone text message from the regional Emergency Ministry.

Many locals reported that the explosion rattled their houses and smashed windows.

“My
windows were not smashed, but I first thought that my house is being
dismantled, then I thought it was a UFO, and my eventual thought was an
earthquake,” Bukreeva Olga wrote on Twitter.

The Mayak
nuclear complex near the town of Ozersk was not affected by the
incident, according to reports. Mayak, one of the world’s biggest
nuclear facilities that used to house plutonium production reactors and a
reprocessing plant, is located 72 kilometers northwest of Chelyabinsk.

It
is believed that the incident may be connected to asteroid 2012 DA14,
which measures 45 to 95 meters in diameter and will be passing by Earth
tonight at around 19:25 GMT at the record close range of 27,000
kilometers.

Photo from Twitter.com user @varlamov

­

Another Tunguska event?

The
incident in Chelyabinsk bears a strong resemblance to the 1908 Tunguska
event – an exceptionally powerful explosion in Siberia believed to have
been caused by a fragment of a comet or meteor.

According to
estimates, the energy of the Tunguska blast may have been as high as 50
megatons of TNT, equal to a nuclear explosion. Some 80 million trees
were leveled over a 2,000-square-kilometer area. The Tunguska blast
remains one of the most mysterious events in history, prompting a wide
array of hypotheses on its cause, including a black hole passing through
Earth and the wreck of an alien spacecraft.

It is believed that
if the Tunguska event had happened 4 hours later, due to the rotation of
the Earth it would have completely destroyed the city of Vyborg and
significantly damaged St. Petersburg.

When a similar,
though less powerful, unexplained explosion happened in Brazil in 1930,
it was named the ‘Brazilian Tunguska.’ The Tunguska event also prompted
debate and research into preventing or mitigating asteroid impacts.